Rub Me Right
by Rendered Reversed
Summary: !ModernDay!AU! In which Tom is a genie operating under the alias "Voldemort"—because who would take a genie named Tom seriously, right?—and Harry is, of course, the unfortunate soul who's summoned him... Or is it the other way around? Oneshot. PRE-SLASH TMR/HP


**Warnings:** sickening cute stuff, alternate universe (AU), pre-slash

 **Pairing** : PRE-SLASH TMR/HP (Tom Marvolo Riddle/Harry Potter)

 **Summary:** In which Tom is a genie operating under the alias "Voldemort"—because who would take a genie named Tom seriously, right?—and Harry is, of course, the unfortunate soul who's summoned him.

...Or is it the other way around?

 **Disclaimer** : Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling; the genies that I'm loosely following are from Disney's Aladdin.

* * *

"Well?"

Harry blinks. "Well what?"

Tom sighs, breath leaving his mouth in a frustrated puff of air. He'd _just_ finished giving the, 'here are three wishes, this is what you can't do with them,' speech, and the _last_ thing he wants to do is repeat it. There are always a few of those in the world; people who just _don't_ pay attention even to the most interesting information they'd ever hear in their entire life. Honestly, someone is telling you that you've got three magical wishes in your arsenal and you can't even bother to _listen_?

Obviously it isn't interesting to Tom anymore, but he figures most humans should still find the opportunity to wield such power something out of the ordinary.

"What's your wish?" Tom asks impatiently, arms crossed and fingers tapping. Once he gets this over with, he can go back inside his lamp and sleep for the next century or so until someone else finds it. It's not a very fulfilling life, true—the air is so utterly _stale_ in there—but the thought of being stuck with another moron for more time than he absolutely has to be is enough to convince him that a life of solitude is the way to go.

"Ah. Well, I don't have to choose _now_ , do I?"

Tom is tempted to tell the boy yes, he _does_ , but that would be a lie and genies have their own set of rules to follow. So instead he grunts a resigned "no" and leaves it at that.

For some inane reason, Harry smiles at him. "Great. I hope you don't mind sticking with me for a bit longer then."

Tom wants to say he _does_ mind. The smile shouldn't be enough to stop him. The shy, reverent way Harry carefully tucks away his lamp into his book bag, however, _is_.

* * *

"So other people can't see you, huh…" Harry remarks, shamelessly turning his head this way and that to glance at the people passing by. None of them have even remotely _looked_ at Tom's way, which is odd in and of itself to Harry because Tom is, after all, a floating half-naked man.

Tom grunts. He hasn't yet considered the new master of his lamp worth talking to—at least, not more than necessary.

"That's pretty nice."

As all genies can, Tom senses the yearning behind his master's words and immediately recognizes this to be an opportunity to get the 'first wish wall' over with. It's often understood that humans of the current age are skeptical of anything so much as _hinting_ at magic—or, in general, the supernatural—which has given the first wish a rather infamous reputation as the most difficult hurdle of them all.

Once the first wish is made and the human sees its results, _usually_ their skepticism fades and the next two wishes come all the more faster. At the least, they're definitely less hesitant with wishing.

"How so?" Tom says, wanting to keep the topic running. The more Harry talks about it, the more likely he'll be to wish for it—even if it's something stupid. It's worked for the last hundred-or-so masters Tom has had, so experience says that it'll work for this one, too.

Harry shrugs. "I dunno. Just…not being noticed all the time. It sounds nice. If people don't see you, they won't try to talk to you."

"Conversation _is_ troublesome," Tom agrees.

"Yeah. I just…I just never know what to say, you know? And people never say the right things either. It makes things so _hard_ —and sometimes, you know, sometimes I just wonder what it would be like if no one saw me for a change."

 _One word._ One word! Tom inwardly curses. So close, and yet so far. If Harry had said "I wish" instead…

"You could wish for it," the genie suggests, deciding to try the straightforward route. His master might be too stupid to be manipulated. Goodness knows _that's_ happened before…

"I could," Harry agrees slowly, "but I mean, wouldn't that change things?"

"I thought you wanted change."

"Well, yes, but I mean other things…you know," the boy makes a vague motion with his hand, "Ah. I guess you _don't_ know. Well, uh, I mean, it might change things like _why_ people talk to me in the first place. My parents…I guess you could say they're sort of famous. My dad works as a detective, and my mum as a doctor. They've both done a lot of work. Been in the paper more than a few times. I'm proud of them. And people…people want to know if _I'm_ going to do good work too, so they talk to me."

"And?"

Harry shrugs, a tad uncomfortable now. "And, well, If I make a wish that no one notices me, wouldn't that erase the reason _why_ people notice me in the first place? Which means my mum and dad wouldn't have done all the things they've done, and that's not right. For them to suffer because I made some silly wish…"

"They would never know," Tom says, sly and hinting. "You would be the only one who would remember."

Harry shakes his head. "It's still not right. Just because they wouldn't remember doesn't mean that makes it okay. They're my parents, for one…though, I don't think I could do that to a stranger anyway. It's just not right."

Tom is tempted to hit the boy, but he holds back because rules are rules and hitting someone isn't the best way to _nonviolently_ convince them to do something. "You could make your wish more specific then. Wish to keep their achievements the same, but still change your situation."

Unfortunately, Harry shakes his head again. "I don't think I'd trust myself to word it right. Besides, what if that changes something else that's equally important?"

Upon realizing that his chance to break the first wish wall has been all bricked up, Tom goes back to grunting. _Of course_ it wouldn't be this easy. It would be nice if it was, but humans tended to overcomplicate things. His new master isn't any different from the rest of them, making up excuses to reason away his own hesitance.

Pathetic. Coward. Just like the lot of them.

"Voldemort?"

"What?"

Harry gives him an awkward smile. "Sorry."

… _What_. " _What_?"

"Uh, sorry. Uh, for, I guess, you know…you tried to help me. Make a wish. But I didn't. Haven't, yet. So, uh, sorry. For that."

Tom blinks, slow and unamused. Fair enough, he'd make a correction—his master _is_ different from the rest of the human race, in respect to his intelligence levels. Honestly, apologizing to a _slave_? Stupid.

He tells him just that.

Harry laughs. "Yeah. I know. Everyone else thinks I'm pretty stupid, too."

* * *

The third day comes and Harry _still_ hasn't made a wish. Forget _stupid_ ; there _has_ to be something wrong with _Tom_ because his new master has yet to fall into any of the verbal traps that Tom's strewn about in an attempt to get him to wish for something.

He must've gotten rusty, or something. How long has it been since the last master he's had?

Hence because of his own ineptitude at tricking Harry Potter, Tom pays the price by having to follow Harry through his day. Theoretically, he _can_ just go back into his lamp and wait until the boy summons him again, but that would mean potentially losing out on more wishing opportunities.

Tom has quickly learned that Harry isn't the selfish type. Rather, he's the self _less_ type, which isn't all _that_ rare—they do exist, and Tom's had to deal with his fair share of them—but it's troublesome nonetheless because unlike _other_ selfless people, Harry's also got a stubborn streak the size of a continent.

Doesn't matter if it's against a person or against _himself_ , Harry's subconsciously stubborn. Tom thinks that goes above and beyond the average levels of stupid, but he supposes humans _have_ evolved since he's last cared to check. Or, well, in this case, _de_ volved.

Harry huffs, struggling to eloquently dictate his words onto the page. In class essays seem to be his worst nightmare.

"Ah," he exclaims, realizing he'd gone off on a completely different tangent on paper.

"You could always wish you were better," Tom says, about the fifteenth time he's rephrased this particular wish.

"I could," Harry agrees with a sigh. His pen scratches out the last two lines, scribbling away at a particularly embarrassing spelling error. "But it doesn't feel worth the wish."

This time, _Tom_ is the one to sigh. He thinks he deserves it. "How so?"

"Improvement isn't unattainable. Just difficult. If I wish for something I could get with just effort, it'd make me feel awfully lazy." Upon muttering that under his breath, just loud enough for Tom to hear but out of the other students' range, Harry squints at the page as he rereads his paragraph. Not good enough, the student appears to decide, but it'll have to do.

"Knowledge is attainable," Tom grudgingly admits. It feels too amiable to him if he leaves it at that, so the genie adds a rather unfriendly grunt to the end of it.

In the end, his efforts are wasted. Harry's too focused on his work to even bother looking remotely uncomfortable.

Stupid as a lamb. Stubborn as a mule. As single-minded as a mutt.

And always full of excuses to wave away potential wishes.

Tom thinks his new master might be unnecessarily difficult on purpose. For what reason, he doesn't know—or wants to think about, lest he find potential holes in his hypothesis—but it's annoying. Harry needs to make up his mind and wish for something.

* * *

It is best to be understood that a genie apathetic to or possessing great disdain of their current master would not care whether or not their lamp ends up in the hands of another. Or, in other words, is lost, stolen, or in neutral terms… _displaced_.

While Harry is not the easiest master to deal with (honestly, can't the boy make up his mind and _make a wish already_?), he is _not_ , in any terms, the worst Tom has ever had. At least, Harry isn't spouting out schemes to take over the world now that he has a genie at his disposal, and much to Tom's great reluctance to admit, Harry doesn't treat Tom like crap.

So instead of "great disdain", Tom is more on the apathetic side. He doesn't care whether or not his lamp finds its way out of Harry's hands, unless that means he'll be given to a master that can actually _wish_ , and thusly 'forgets' to tell Harry about proper lamp care and maintenance.

That is, until a week later.

Honestly, it isn't some big event that nails the proverbial nail into the coffin—it's just Harry being Harry. Harry being stupid, _stubborn_ , unpredictable Harry. Tom is trying to get used to that.

"What are you doing?" the genie asks, condescending and deadpanned all in one question.

"Uh…" Harry freezes, one hand with some squirt bottle cleaning product and the other with a small face towel, "Cleaning?"

Tom gives him a look before grunting and inclining his head toward the lamp placed delicately in front of him. When Harry doesn't say anything—just looks sheepish, in fact—Tom finally sighs and decides to use words. "My lamp?"

"Well, yes."

" _Well_ ," Tom stresses, mocking and sarcastic and frustrated, " _why_?"

"Uh…my mum's always told me to keep things clean. She can't deal with _twice_ my father's mess," Harry replies, not really understanding the question but figuring that answer is as good as any. "It's kind of become a habit."

Tom knows Harry isn't lying, because Harry's room is almost impeccably clean. His desk is neat and tidy, no clothes strewn out on the floor, the closet is made up and even has more space awaiting allocation, and Tom has seen Harry do the dishes on chore day—the boy looks at specks that can't be removed like they're his worst enemy. Surprising, since usually his master is the farthest thing away from antagonistic.

"Are you calling my lamp _dirty_?"

"N-no!" Harry exclaims, backtracking, "I just…wanted to clean it. I mean, you live in it, right? Mum says if you maintain things that are clean _before_ they get dirty, they're easier to deal with. So I just thought that, you know…I can't just _leave it there_. I mean, it's not like it's collecting dust or anything, but I carry it around, so I don't want it to get dirty. Just because I can't _see_ anything doesn't mean nothing's there to clean."

Harry rambles like that when he gets defensive or flustered. In fact, Harry rambles whenever he's put into a conversation—Tom has learned this. Tom has understood this and discerned the very hows, whys, and whens of this stupid quirk of Harry's.

Because it's stupid. Not cute at all. And it's _annoying_.

"You don't have to," Tom says when it looks like Harry will go back to scrubbing.

"Huh? You sure? It's not a problem to—"

"The lamp cleans itself," the genie says, shrugging. "It never gets dirty. So you don't have to clean it."

"Oh," Harry says. He frowns, staring down at the lamp, and then to the bottle of cleaning product in his hand. Then, as if he's done making a decision and therefore it's time to just roll with it, he sprays the lamp again and takes up the towel and starts scrubbing again.

Moments like these, and Tom really wonders if his master has been diagnosed a bit not all there in the head.

The genie sighs. "What are you doing?"

"Cleaning your lamp."

"Didn't I just _say_ —"

"Well, yes."

Genies don't scream. _Tom_ doesn't scream. He's not the type to, first of all, even if he really wants to. It's a sort of _image_ thing, alright? Genies have a reputation, and Tom has a reputation among genies. He _doesn't scream_. It's not a particularly important fact, but it's all part of the big picture in the end. So Tom doesn't.

Scream, that is. Even though in his head the long stretch of silence is notably on purpose. It lasts about as long as it would take to let out a shout of frustration and hold it a few beats for the dramatics.

"Then why are you cleaning it."

Harry bites his lip, teeth rubbing against the skin there. "Do you…not want me to?"

"No," Tom replies testily, "but it's pointless. You could be doing other things. Like making wishes."

His master laughs. "I don't think it's pointless," he says. "It's your home, after all. Even though I don't _have_ to clean it, it's not the fact that it's not dirty that matters. You probably take care of your home, and your home is in _my_ home, and _I_ take care of my home, so I'm taking care of yours, too. You might not think it's that important, but I think it's worth the time anyway."

…This brat will be the death of him. He's sure of it. Tom wonders how much stupidity it takes to think such a thing, and _then_ how much stupidity will it take—or lack of a filter—to actually _say it_. Harry's level of idiocy is beyond Tom's comprehension now.

But it's that, that moronic buffoon, that has him sighing and sitting down and teaching Harry how to properly care for the lamp. Human cleaning product does virtually nothing. It's how one scrubs it that matters, Tom tells in a very serious tone.

Harry nods just as seriously. He takes up polishing the lamp twice a day—one time in the morning, one time in the evening—and after a few days of this (and _still_ no wishes), Tom decides to tell Harry how to properly protect the lamp from theft as well. Just sticking it in the bottom of his book bag won't cut it if he isn't wearing his bag at _all_ times.

In Tom's mind, his new master has progressed from 'stupid coward who can't make wishes' to 'stupidest idiot on the planet…but he's pretty good at polishing'. Tom idly wonders if Harry is any good at making a jasmine tea, too.

* * *

Even if Tom feels like no time passes by at all, life does, in fact, go on for Harry. Midterms pass without a single wish. Harry's grades aren't abysmal, but they aren't top tier either. Tom wonders if that makes it worse.

Like the proverbial cherry on top, or frosting on a cake. Tom sighs and goes back to the drawing board. If academics don't lure in a wish, he'll have to target other things.

* * *

Harry finds an abandoned kitten on the side of the road. Predictably, he takes it in and nurses it back to health before Tom can even begin to say, "You could wish it was healthy, you know—"

It's predictable. Just not the sort of predictable a genie would like.

The cat's a brown tabby cat and causes chaos in the Potter House, because apparently Harry's father is allergic to cat fur. Unfortunately, that means they can't keep it. _Fortunately_ , Tom is a magical genie, and Harry still has three wishes.

"You could wish he wasn't allergic to cats." That wasn't hurting anyone, right? _Right_? Tom waits with baited breath.

Harry mulls it over in his head. Of course he does.

"No," the boy says with a sense of finality, "It's okay. It just means that someone else is meant to keep him."

Tom sighs. He grunts in a half-hearted way to show his disapproval when Harry declares he'll start putting up fliers.

* * *

Tom is at least five hundred percent sure that Harry's stupid luck is one of the reasons why he doesn't make any wishes. The day after the fliers are up, they get a call from a hopeful family of nine for a pet to replace a rat that ran away.

Harry is determined to meet them. Tom says, just to cover all his bases, "You could wish—"

It's sad that he doesn't even have to finish his suggestions.

"No," Harry replies, firm, "I want to meet them. He deserves a good home, and magic would be the lazy way out."

Tom grunts. They go meet the Weasley family.

It's Ginerva, the youngest daughter of the seven siblings, who first saw the fliers. She apparently immediately fell in love with the cat and asked her parents about it. While the Weasleys aren't well off by any means, they have enough to afford cat food and some medical care—toys, at least, are handled by the fact that there are nine people in the house, all willing to play with a kitten.

She takes one look at Harry and stutters her way through an explanation. The pink blush is almost reaching a fiery red, as dark as her hair, but Harry doesn't notice—or pretends to not see it, as well as not hear the snickering of several older brothers.

Tom is displeased. All matters of love cannot be wished for, so having a love interest that would distract his master from making _actually doable wishes_ is a waste of time.

"Let's get rid of the cat and go home," the genie suggests when the Weasleys invite him to join them for lunch.

Harry frowns. And then, in a move completely against his nature (then again, since Harry's nature is, in fact, unpredictability, it really _isn't_ ), he begins to turn the offer of the Weasley matriarch down.

…Since when did Harry go along with Tom's suggestions? _What did he do differently that he didn't do when he was trying to coax wishes?!_ Tom is both ecstatic, frustrated, and smug.

Molly Weasley ruins everything by _insisting_ , and the next thing he knows, Tom is floating behind Harry as he takes a seat at the dinner table, right next to Ginny.

The kitten is named Pigwidgeon and somehow, socially inept as she was, Ginerva manages to extract a promise out of Harry to visit later. Tom wonders how strong a hypnosis he'll have to put on his master in order to make him forget about it.

It is a week later, in an ordeal that Tom purposely omits from description, that he finds out his master is immune to hypnotism. _Of course he is._

* * *

Halfway into the evening polishing session, Harry humming some tune he heard playing around school and Tom too exasperated to care if his master caught him staring, the genie gives up on his plans Q and below—plans A to P failed quite spectacularly—and finally decides that the best and only plan that would ever work on someone as stupid as Harry is, well, no plan at all.

That is, to be straightforward about it.

"When are you going to make your first wish?" Tom asks, forthright in all manners.

Harry looks up, abruptly cutting off from finishing his song. "I don't know," he says after some thought. "Do you want me to make a wish?"

Tom stumbles. _Of course he does._ What was _literally every situation since_? Every single time that he asked Harry whether or not he wanted to wish for something—

His master is stupid. This, to Tom, is a fact. An irrefutable, cold hard _fact_ now.

"No," Tom says, and the look on his face as he realizes what he's said is both comical and horrifying. Tom _doesn't do_ shocked. It isn't a nice facial expression on him. "I mean, yes."

Harry blinks. "Well, which one is it?"

"Didn't I just say 'yes'?"

"You also said no," the boy points out.

Tom resists closing his eyes and counting to ten. Not only does it look ridiculous, but it also won't work. Harry's stupidity is more than ten seconds can erase. "I corrected myself and said yes."

"Ah. Really?"

…Forget it. Ten seconds might not be able to erase _everything_ , but maybe it'll at least be enough to help him resist smacking his master on the head.

"Weird. It didn't sound like a correction."

Tom, this time, is the one to freeze. His eyes, in an accidental flicker, manage to meet Harry's. Tom is serious this time. On guard. Harry is pokerfaced and yet still sees through everything, the mirror of his eyes too telling for Tom to bear.

"How so?" the genie asks, cautious.

The moment is broken when Harry shrugs and averts his gaze back to the lamp. His hands begin to polish it again, cloth careful and movements smooth. That's Harry, treating an inanimate object exactly like the kitten he'd taken care of. Stupid, stupid Harry. Foolish Harry.

…Not a coward, Harry.

"I dunno," Harry says, ripping Tom's mind away from his thoughts. The genie is inordinately thankful for it. "Just the way you said it. You always sound so confident with everything you do or say. Firm. Like you think about everything before it comes out of your mouth."

"The opposite of you," Tom can't help but point out.

His master doesn't take offense. "Yeah," Harry nods, "The opposite of me. That's how I can tell, I guess. If you correct yourself, you explain yourself. You usually don't deny what you say. It's just the way you are…I dunno if that explains it, though. It was a guess, I guess. Was I wrong?"

Tom is almost frightened how accurate his master is. That, paired with the instant denial that comes to his tongue and almost makes its way out of his mouth, is even scarier. Because Harry is right—Tom _does_ think about everything he says, and he thought about Harry's question too before he said, "No." Speaking of a lack of filter, that's what Harry has. That's what he's almost given Tom, too, and the thought is as terrifying as the idea that _this might be the moment,_ might be the time when Harry makes his first wish.

…When he makes his first wish, and breaks the wall. And then all three wishes will be gone. And Tom will be alone again, without Harry's stupidity to constantly ridicule and take comfort in.

The genie doesn't trust himself to say anything, doesn't trust his words to eloquently convey the very _not_ eloquent way he's feeling right now. So he says nothing, but somehow the silence is as loud as his almost admission, and that kind of makes it worse.

Then Harry nods. Tom waits for him to say something in reply, but he doesn't.

Breath he doesn't realize he's holding leaves him. Harry cradles the lamp in his hold—always so careful—and begins to polish the other side.

It's been three months since Harry's first summoned him and Tom's a little late in acknowledging that Harry might not be that stupid after all.

* * *

Actually, never mind. Harry's an idiot.

That's only one of the things that Tom's thinking about as he floats behind his fleeing master, the sound of a chase behind them because _someone_ saw the precious gold lamp in his bag, and that _someone_ turned into _multiple someones_ and now they're running from a group of gangsters that want to steal Tom's lamp.

"You're an idiot."

"I think you've told me that before," Harry breathes, panting as he turns the corner and darts down the sidewalk. It's later in the evening and there aren't that many people up and about on the streets—which is unfortunate, because that means yelling for help would do pretty much _nothing_ in time. The shops are closed along the road, lights off so he doesn't even have to check with a tug to their doors.

Harry's so, _so_ stupid. Tom hisses under his breath as he takes a quick glance behind them.

"Keep running," the genie commands. Harry doesn't even bother to nod in reply.

He does, however, quip a very cheeky, "Way ahead of you," which earns him a rather disapproving grunt.

"You could wish," Tom says, half serious and half full of dread. A wish is the best solution after all. Who knows if these gangsters are connected to more powerful people, people who would be more than interested in a boy carrying around a golden lamp. People who could hurt Harry.

"I could," Harry agrees, a reply that's almost reflexive by now.

"And?" Tom prompts when nothing more is said.

"I don't want to."

Out of all the possible answers Harry could've given him…never mind. That's not even on Tom's _list_ of possible replies, which is saying something. Tom can't beat stupid, unpredictable Harry after all. He doubts any genie in the world could, but he wouldn't make that a bet because that means genies other than _him_ would be with Harry, and their lamps would probably be polished, too. Which is wrong. Not right.

Harry doesn't polish anyone else's lamp except _his_.

…But now's not the time for that little tangent.

"Should I even ask why?"

His master laughs, breathless but for some reason _happy_. "Because you're my friend, and friends don't treat each other like they're from a toolbox."

That. _That._ _THAT_ is why Harry is stupid and why Tom can't figure out for the life of him _how_ Harry is so bad at writing essays if he can say something like that, and wow how is Harry alive again because that was just so stupidly naïve and cheesy and—

"You're an idiot," Tom says, "I mean it this time. You're so stupid I wonder how you haven't gotten yourself killed yet."

Harry shrugs and darts into the police station he's taken several detours and several circles away from, just to ensure the gangsters who've been chasing him don't realize where he's been going. He tells the closest person by him in a uniform of the situation, pointing out the door and motioning down the street.

The officer nods seriously and waves over several other men. They step out and the group that's been chasing Harry abruptly stop three meters away from them, immediately turning back and running the way they came.

There is another chase, except Harry's not a participant anymore.

"Maybe it's because everyone else thinks the same way," he tells Tom once the situation is diffused. "Maybe it's because they say I'm stupid, that they figure I'm not worth committing homicide over."

Tom sincerely doubts that.

And if, for some reason, Harry happens to be right—which happens more often than Tom cares to admit—then everyone else is far more stupid than he's ever thought Harry could be.

* * *

There's a time and place for everything, Tom knows. He's lived for awhile. Been around the block more than once or twice. Through the ages, he's seen more of people's bad sides than he cares to think about. He's seen their good sides too, but all in all there's just not enough interest in humanity for him to consider if a life in his lamp isn't the right way to go.

So he knows. He knows there's a time and place for everything, but wishes—if only to himself—that there will never be a time and place for Harry's first wish.

"Voldemort?"

"What?"

"Hypothetically," Harry says, " _hypothetically_ , if I were to, oh, wish for something, would you like to know what it was?"

No, he wouldn't, because that would put the idea in Tom's head, and Tom is, after all, a _genie_. He's the sort that grants wishes in order to get back to sweet, sweet silence inside his lamp, and if Harry tells him what he wants, even if it's hypothetically, Tom fears he might subconsciously take advantage of it and finally coax a wish out of him.

And he doesn't want that. He _really_ doesn't want that.

"Yes," Tom says, and really hates that really loud voice in his head that tells him he wants Harry to be happy, and since he's a magical genie and can grant wishes— _Harry's_ wishes—he has more potential than any other person on the planet to ensure it. Harry's happiness.

Harry's stupid, _stupidly precious_ happiness.

Tom sighs. His master is an idiot.

"Then, _hypothetically_ , I _would've_ wanted to wish…"

Alright, so Harry's an idiot, but at least he's smart enough to purposely separate the "wish" part from the "I" part. That's important. That's _very_ important, because mistakes happen all too often—Tom's seen it happen more than a dozen times—and he's already surprised that Harry's never slipped up before. It better not start happening now.

"I _would've_ wanted to wish that I knew your name."

To hell with it. Harry's unpredictability knows no bounds, and Tom's pretty sure he's more open to surprises than any other time in his life. _Still_ , Harry surprises him. It's utter bullshit like that—pulling stuff like _that_ —that makes Tom wonder if a genie taught Harry how to make his stupidity an asset.

Because seriously, only a genie could be _that_ conniving. Harry's smile is all too innocent though, so Tom pushes away the thought in preference to another sigh.

"How."

"I doubt even a _genie_ would have a name like 'Voldemort'. That _has_ to be made up. Right?"

"It's an anagram," Tom grudgingly admits. "I had a brief stint of insanity in my youth, and it stuck."

Harry laughs. Tom ignores the way the boy reaches out for his hand and squeezes it reassuringly, like he doesn't find it embarrassing at all and he's glad that Tom's told him. Stupid Harry, who can't even say what he wants to say so he has to rely on body language instead.

"Well? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, though. I'm fine just calling you Voldemort."

Tom considers it.

"You won't laugh," the genie commands seriously.

Harry nods, appearing solemn. "I won't. I promise."

Tom sniffs, imperiously turning his head away so he doesn't catch Harry's expression when he tells. "You may call me 'Tom', then."

"Tom," Harry parrots, testing it out like a new word he's never said before. "Tom. Tom? _Tom_ …"

It's been at _least_ a century since Tom's face has flushed bright red. His master accomplishes the task with less than five seconds of set up.

"Don't say it like _that_! Idiot."

"Oh? Then how should I say it? _Tom_?"

" _Harry._ Shut up."

Harry laughs anyway, even though he promised not to. Tom figures he'll let it slide, just this one time.

* * *

 **FFFFFffffffffffffffff... mmmph.**

 **Okay so you guys seriously probably don't realize how much little thought actually goes into forming all my oneshots. It can be something as small as the title, or something as stupid as the summary, and then BAM you got yourself a oneshot in the process of being born. Usually when this happens I like to just write it all out in one day, but sometimes that's impossible if it's too long. In this case, one day. Those are literally the best unnnnmmmf~~~~ ヽ(' ∇' )ノ**

 **In this case, both the summary and the title are gifts from the gods. So here is a wonderful oneshot for you all that can be taken either slash or pre slash. Both work.**

 **I hope you enjoy this cute little oneshot!~ Have a fantastic day, guys.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **R.R.**


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